Scam states

Greatape

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/02/scam-state-multi-billion-dollar-industry-south-east-asia

The scale is truly terrifying. 

VimFuego

I must say, I thought the end stage dystopian nightmare would be more road warriors and zombies. The reality is much more like just normal life but dialed up to 11.

Kittyfrisk

Certainly taking the 'hiding in plain sight' thing a bit far...

snowblind

The serious players in this game have largely given up hiding. As soon as the whole game was scaled up to an industrial level it pretty much became legit. If relieving foreigners of their hard-earned makes up 20% of your national GDP the local government ain't gonna care. 

It's the poor, miserable slaves at the bottom end of the business who get the worst of it.

I had one of those calls recently from "Microsoft Technical Support".  I usually mess them about a bit to pass the time. In this case I just said, "You are wasting your life. Can't you get a better job?". The reply was a very despondent, "Can you offer me a better job?". The tone just captured the miserable existence most of these poor fuckers must lead.

Yet another reason to get rid of money. The amount of useless, wasteful effort that is spawned from people desperately clawing their way to some pittance just to survive is infinite. There is a better way to do things.

Imagine this. No money means no motivation to produce and supply narcotics which means 80 people wouldn't be dead in the waters of the Caribbean and Pete Hegseth wouldn't be looking at charges for war crimes. Stick that in in your causality pipe and smoke it.

Dominic

the last 3 weeks I have been getting at least 2 calls per day from "Sky Marketing " wanting my email details for the special free offers and upgrades etc etc etc 
The Accent is heavily Indian / Pakistani but they are variously called Albert , Edward,George, Charles , I even had 2 females who were Elizabeth and Diana ................definately something fishy 
I think Philip was missing because it sounded too much like Dilip ,but,
I'm starting to think those freeloaders actually do work for a living .......just not how we thought

TTony

snowblind said:

 The tone just captured the miserable existence most of these poor fuckers must lead.

Yet another reason to get rid of money. 

That is wisdom - they are just bodies, bought and sold into slavery.

Of course, AI will probably make them redundant fairly shortly (I doubt redundancy pay is part of their benefits package), and also improve the realism of their efforts, funding more investment in even-cleverer AI techniques to further refine their craft.  

So, there's a positive.


Not sure about the practicalities of getting rid of money - as a means of facilitating exchange, it's probably more effective than coloured beads.  But as a measure of someone's "value", as something to strive to gain more, more and more, it is - as you say - deeply flawed. 

But probably reflective of the deeply flawed state of those humans who spend their lives chasing it, and trampling anyone and everyone to gain the more, more, more of it.

And we like to think of our species as being the most intelligent on the planet ...

TTony

snowblind said:

No money means no motivation to produce and supply narcotics which means 80 people wouldn't be dead in the waters of the Caribbean and Pete Hegseth wouldn't be looking at charges for war crimes. Stick that in in your causality pipe and smoke it.

Removing money won't remove the narcotics business.

People wanting narcotics will merely trade something else for a fix - whether it's their diminished stock of coloured beads, their bodies, or their willingness to perform some other unpleasant acts.

Legalisation is the best (or least worst) option for removing that business and its associated negativities.  At point of production, drugs are cheap, even when production is notionally illegal.  Legalise it from field to street corner supply point, in a way that guarantees quality, eliminates risk, vastly reduces purchase price by removing all the middlemen, makes it more equivalent to the more acceptable drugs of tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, etc.

Of course, we'd likely have to trust governments to oversee and regulate the entire process, so not entirely without risks ...

guitars4you

TTony said:

snowblind said:

No money means no motivation to produce and supply narcotics which means 80 people wouldn't be dead in the waters of the Caribbean and Pete Hegseth wouldn't be looking at charges for war crimes. Stick that in in your causality pipe and smoke it.

Removing money won't remove the narcotics business.

People wanting narcotics will merely trade something else for a fix - whether it's their diminished stock of coloured beads, their bodies, or their willingness to perform some other unpleasant acts.

Legalisation is the best (or least worst) option for removing that business and its associated negativities.  At point of production, drugs are cheap, even when production is notionally illegal.  Legalise it from field to street corner supply point, in a way that guarantees quality, eliminates risk, vastly reduces purchase price by removing all the middlemen, makes it more equivalent to the more acceptable drugs of tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, etc.

Of course, we'd likely have to trust governments to oversee and regulate the entire process, so not entirely without risks ...

I know the legislation of drugs would not be an easy journey - Be it from plantation to end user - But I do wonder if there is any stats to indicate the potential tax revenue from making it legal 

Then add to that the potential savings the NHS would be making - Along with the relevant crime agencies, who are fighting a losing battle, who can then spend time fighting other crimes- Hopefully a legalised business would reduce street crime when junkies commit ‘petty crimes’ in order to finance a fix

As i said there would be pros and cons in legislation- But currently it is a tax free business worth billions- With El Pedro running the whole process based on fear

snowblind

And just how is legislation working out at stamping out the drugs trade? Or the War on drugs for that matter. Combating the supply has become an industry in itself. You can never remove the desire to use. The best you can do is remove the motivation to supply.

Can you think of any reason other than the profit motive why the tobacco industry exists? Even when tobacco itself became so widely recognised as harmful all we did was extract the key ingredient and shove it into a new delivery system ie vapes so the sheckels keep flowing. We'll gloss over the harm accruing from bathing the lungs in paraffin for the time being because the youth market for this stuff is still booming. 

We have to change our motivations. It is essential to our survival as a species.

guitars4you

TTony said:

snowblind said:

No money means no motivation to produce and supply narcotics which means 80 people wouldn't be dead in the waters of the Caribbean and Pete Hegseth wouldn't be looking at charges for war crimes. Stick that in in your causality pipe and smoke it.

Removing money won't remove the narcotics business.

People wanting narcotics will merely trade something else for a fix - whether it's their diminished stock of coloured beads, their bodies, or their willingness to perform some other unpleasant acts.

Legalisation is the best (or least worst) option for removing that business and its associated negativities.  At point of production, drugs are cheap, even when production is notionally illegal.  Legalise it from field to street corner supply point, in a way that guarantees quality, eliminates risk, vastly reduces purchase price by removing all the middlemen, makes it more equivalent to the more acceptable drugs of tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, etc.

Of course, we'd likely have to trust governments to oversee and regulate the entire process, so not entirely without risks ...

Additionally - Go back to the original days of international drug trafficking and the likes of The East India company in the UK and The Russell Company in the USA where at the heart of it - Both backed, supported , endorsed and/or sponsored by their relevant governments - I always wonder when did such ‘authorities’ pull out of such lucrative businesses, in order to let El Pedro run it

Then bring into play the launch/growth of HSBC - In fact, based on recent Mexican activity, HSBC never backed down from helping the laundering process 

Dominic

You could say that about every wine ,beer ,spirit or any other life pleasure .

Kittyfrisk

snowblind said:

And just how is legislation working out at stamping out the drugs trade? Or the War on drugs for that matter. Combating the supply has become an industry in itself. You can never remove the desire to use. The best you can do is remove the motivation to supply.

Can you think of any reason other than the profit motive why the tobacco industry exists? Even when tobacco itself became so widely recognised as harmful all we did was extract the key ingredient and shove it into a new delivery system ie vapes so the sheckels keep flowing. We'll gloss over the harm accruing from bathing the lungs in paraffin for the time being because the youth market for this stuff is still booming. 

We have to change our motivations. It is essential to our survival as a species.

I agree with you, apart from the 'paraffin' part, which I guess was probably poetic licence. The main ingredient for the carrier base is glycerol, which has had very little proper scientific research regarding the effects on human inhalation, much less in totally unregulated vapes & 'juices'.
What did you say about keeping the money flowing... 

TTony

guitars4you said:

But I do wonder if there is any stats to indicate the potential tax revenue from making it legal 

Then add to that the potential savings the NHS would be making - Along with the relevant crime agencies,

Tax revenue would depend on how pricey you made the product - the bigger benefit would be, as you say, the saving to the many public services currently involved in attempted prevention and ineffective cure.

VimFuego

TTony said:

guitars4you said:

But I do wonder if there is any stats to indicate the potential tax revenue from making it legal 

Then add to that the potential savings the NHS would be making - Along with the relevant crime agencies,

Tax revenue would depend on how pricey you made the product - the bigger benefit would be, as you say, the saving to the many public services currently involved in attempted prevention and ineffective cure.

a slight tangent (or maybe no) someone once told me that the morphine vials we carried on the ambulances cost something like £1.00 each. The dosage was 10mg/ml, dunno how that translates to what a junkie would consume, but it was enough to deaden the pain of a broken leg, so I guess it was pretty strong. I've no idea what the street value of that would be, but I suspect quite a bit more than a quid. Goes to show how much markup there is along the way. It's certainly cheap enough that cost would not be a hinderance to obtaining the drug, so you'd have to tax the bejesus out of it to stop people blasting their brains out with it on a regular basis. But then you tax it too much, you motivate someone to provide an untaxed product, and you're back at square one.

TTony

VimFuego said:

so you'd have to tax the bejesus out of it to stop people blasting their brains out with it on a regular basis.

We let them blast their brains out on alcohol, tobacco killed millions, and today we (seemingly) actively encourage them to screw their lives up on a betting app.  All addictions.

In the US, more immediate paths to oblivion are available at the corner shop, just take an ID and here’s your semi-automatic.

Sure, drugs kill.  We can’t stop those who want to die.  Legalising and managing the supply would improve the chances of those who don’t want to die as well as being a far better use of police and health services for the rest of us.


[edit]

But I realise in an unlikely winner of the popular vote.

VimFuego

you could widen the availability of and training in the use of narcan, mebbe bundle it up with the drugs. Buy 5 vials of heroin, get a free narcan. 

snowblind

Kittyfrisk said:

snowblind said:

And just how is legislation working out at stamping out the drugs trade? Or the War on drugs for that matter. Combating the supply has become an industry in itself. You can never remove the desire to use. The best you can do is remove the motivation to supply.

Can you think of any reason other than the profit motive why the tobacco industry exists? Even when tobacco itself became so widely recognised as harmful all we did was extract the key ingredient and shove it into a new delivery system ie vapes so the sheckels keep flowing. We'll gloss over the harm accruing from bathing the lungs in paraffin for the time being because the youth market for this stuff is still booming. 

We have to change our motivations. It is essential to our survival as a species.

I agree with you, apart from the 'paraffin' part, which I guess was probably poetic licence. The main ingredient for the carrier base is glycerol, which has had very little proper scientific research regarding the effects on human inhalation, much less in totally unregulated vapes & 'juices'.
What did you say about keeping the money flowing... 

Yes, the use of the term paraffin was probably playing fast and loose with the specifics of the actual solvent chemistry but largely only to condense the sentiment of the piece.

For those supporting the "legalize and tax" approach all that really happens there is the profits are transferred to government directly instead of having to be filtered through the illegal supply chains. The scale of the profit is largely a measure of the degree of prohibition. Ultimately it makes no difference whether the beneficiary is an elected government or an unelected crime lord (or both in the case of a certain tangerine terror we could mention). 

We continually make value judgements within the framework of profit vs loss. The only way to alter that is to modify the framework. We expend a vast amount of what is fundamentally unproductive effort solely because there is a financial reward. If instead we measured the reward in terms of actual benefit as opposed to a handful of shiny metal disks we might view our priorities differently. Believe it or not the concept isn't as far fetched as might be imagined. We simply need to program ourselves to be a little less self-serving and grasp the idea that we exist in a system wherein everything is interconnected.
Every other species on the planet contrives to exist without money. Curious that the one that considers itself the most intelligent is the only one that can't.

TTony

snowblind said:

We simply need to program ourselves to be a little less self-serving and grasp the idea that we exist in a system wherein everything is interconnected.

Indeed.  "Simply".

snowblind

TTony said:

snowblind said:

We simply need to program ourselves to be a little less self-serving and grasp the idea that we exist in a system wherein everything is interconnected.

Indeed.  "Simply".

Indeed. I am obviously simple.